I was completely unsure as to whether this trilogy was going to be my cup of tea or not. I’m not much of a fantasy/science fiction type of reader really (well, all fiction is fantasy I suppose, what I mean is that I mostly like my characters to stay bound by the same limits that I am I guess, even though they mostly don’t even when they inhabit the same universe I do, I could stay here in parentheses all day and talk about this, let’s get out…) and though i’ve heard from numerous sources that these books were very good I’ve been reserving judgement and I only tentatively jumped into this one to test the water. Now I’m racing back to the bookshop to pick up the next two volumes as this was exceedingly well written and an excellent story.

On the one hand it feels like it’s only a children’s book on the surface, there’s no let up on vocabulary for instance and there’s no soft soaping of all the emotional issues in the story for a young audience. On the other hand I think it works because it’s intended as a children’s story, there’s a level on which the emotions and soul churning violence wouldn’t work as well in an adult book. The themes covered are enormous and I felt that the story takes place in a universe different to our own in order to enhance it’s applicability to our own universe rather than just so the author can have free rein.

The ending is great, we complete a story but open up another can of worms for another book, just like the first book of a trilogy ought to end.